Our game

by John le Carré

Book Overview

Retired British spymaster Tim Cranmer is drawn back into the game when his alluring mistress, Emma, and his star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, both disappear. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 034064026X
• ISBN13: 9780340640265
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

From the mountains of Jairakh

John Le Carre did his homework. Excellent book, 5 stars indeed.

Le Carre at his best

Taut and suspenseful, this novel displays Le Carre's unique literary gift for full-blooded characterizations within a plot that keeps the pages turning. Many thrillers make readers choose: either an exciting plot with weak characters (Ludlum) or great characterization and muddled plot (Furst). Here again, Le Carre shows why he is at the top of this difficult genre. We are intrigued by the action and care deeply for the characters, making a compelling book worth a second read.

The bill for stability

In Britain, retired civil servants are typified by life in rural cottages, pottering about in a rose garden and Sundays with The Times. Tim Cranmer doesn't quite fulfill the picture. His "rural cottage" is an inherited spot of land containing a chapel. His rose garden is a struggling vineyard. And Sundays are occupied by visits from his former protege. Instead of a demure wife to complete the picture, Tim's resident lady is half his age and a composer. Hardly the picture of a staid bureaucrat out to pasture. Perhaps all these variations are due to Cranmer being other than a "retired civil servant" - he's a retired spook. Spies never truly retire. They may distance themselves somewhat from the sharp end, but there are always loose ends left over and old cases that resurrect themselves. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was supposed to put ranks of spies from the West [and John Le Carre] out of work. They were considered poorly adapted to the new conditions. Le Carre and his literary creations have refuted that notion. His "retired" spy becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy of stupendous scope. It seems his protege, who was a double pretending to spy for the Soviets, is involved in an embezzlement - 37 billion BP, to be exact. The money is to finance a war of "national liberation" - a little item of ethnic minorities having faith in their identity. Their location is in the ramparts of the Caucasus Mountains, where loyalties are fierce, but the population scattered. Lacking resources, they seem to have convinced Cranmer's double to help finance weapons' purchases. Larry Pettifer, Cranmer's long-term protege, is an intellectual. He changes ideologies like his socks. A consummate wheeler-dealer, he duped his Soviet minders for many years. What effect did his most recent case officer have to change him? And where does Tim's resident consort, who disappears mysteriously, fit in to the picture? Emma finds Larry charming, but his flighty personality and behaviour seem inconsistent for a woman yearning for stability. Has she fled from security to embrace adventure? What price will Tim pay to recover her? The Western powers seek stability as well. Le Carre imparts the view that once the Soviet Empire dissolved, capitalism sought but fresh opportunities for investment. Justice and enterprise are often at odds, the more so when resources like oil or minerals are involved. Le Carre has taken up the cause of justice in all his writings, but his more recent ones speak with a more strident voice. Cranmer is portrayed as a voice of an older generation, quietly pleased that the Soviet Union is moribund. The issues of the post-Soviet East seem remote. Le Carre, with his usual skill, portrays a man drawn in by events beyond his control or his ken. It is easy to sympathise with him. But it is Pettifer's idealism that speaks for Le Carre. Never an ideologue, Le Carre's finely wrought narrative confronts us with our own uncaring self-in

Some Game This!!

We all, lovers of John Le Carre's spy thrillers thought that the collapse of the Soviet empire, end of cold-war, and emergence of a unipolar world, will make writers like Lecarre unemployed, and deprive us of any more interesting books. Not so. Great, creative writers like Lecarre, can never be unemployed, can never let down their fans.This is one of most fascinating books that I have ever read. It's not a typical Lecarre, but all the specialties of Lecarre's writing skills; superb detailing, suspense and power of drama, study of treachery and trust, strange phenomenon & bond of relationships that defy any definition, gripping storyline, seamless narration, are all there, in much better form than ever.Tim Cranmer, a spymaster with British secret service, had recruited and trained Larry, a renegade political thinker as a double agent. Tim ran Larry for over 20 years, and developed a very close, personal relationship which was much more than a spy and a master.Tim, now retired, lives in countryside growing vine. A divorcee has befriended Emma, a musician half his age, who often lives with him. Larry too is now out of the "service", and is a teacher at a university. Larry keeps visiting Tim for old time's sake. The friendship continues.One fine day, Larry is missing, and so is Emma. Police investigators have stumbled across many imponderables and inklings of something big and sinister. Tim is interrogated and harassed by the Police. Tim seeks help from his former employers. The "office" not only disowns him totally; rather they too start an investigation of their own. Tim is all alone, on the run, his love life ruined, Emma seems to have dumped him, his close confidante is missing, his old friends and colleagues have not only ditched him, but have also turned against. Tim is in a mess.However, using his own skills and resources, Tim embarks on a mission to unravel the truth. The pursuit takes him to Europe, and all over Russian provinces, right behind the war lines. What does he find? What does he do thereafter? The story and the suspense are too good to be disclosed.Entire story is in in first person, as experienced and narrated by Tim, the lead character. The three main characters, the way they develop, and the way they have been etched and analysed, is superb.The narration is superb. Suddenly it jumps from the present to the past, to a future possibility, and back to the present again...is just like the way, a human mind, especially a disturbed one under stress will function under the circumstances.In process of the story, Lecarre with his phenomenal research tells us all about the history of various ethnic minorities in the CIS, and exposes us to the views and lives of various ethnic minorities and their problems. The mighty USSR as long as it held up, had never let the world know about any of these. We in India thought that only we have so many ethnic groups and minorities, and a variety of diversity! CIS has as many.I finished the book in on